Swipekick is not open-sourced, but follows the idea of open development. The aim is to be transparent and do it with and for the community.

Wild Color System

Current color palette system needs an overhaul that works great in every possible scenario. For example, color schemes in modals is messed up and don't have a good contrast.

Anyway.. The primary color is derived from the dominant color of the main image and is set for the entire page. We call that color Wild, because it could be any of the 255 hue values. Saturation and luminance are fixed.

We can’t control the user created content, so that the colors have to work in pretty much all cases, which is why a system is needed. User uploaded image could be low-saturated, black-and-white, extremely saturated, variegated, extremely un-even, etc.

Private Feeds

Users might not want to make every feed public. Some feeds could be just for ourselves. Or perhaps some feeds are only meant for certain people.

Drafts for Feeds

Possibility to save your changes without publishing them. Also reverting back to last published version.

Automated Feeds

Setting up a feed to bring together your content from Instagram and Youtube. For example, by posting with a certain hashtag in other platforms it’s automatically added to a Feed of your choice.

Feed Email Subscription

We’d like to make it possible to subscribe to a feed just by inserting email. There would be a certain interval that emails are being sent with the updates of that feed. Also, that means creating an user is not actually needed. Your email address is the user that has everything tied to it.

Back-end revamp

The first Swipekick was built with Java backend. Current one is serverless with Next.js api routes and Supabase, which has been great as building this prototype. However, it has certain drawbacks. Back-end developer is needed.

Front-end revamp

Need to look into upgrading to Next.js App Router (currently using Pages Router) or Remix. Swipekick is currently not the most performant and could take quite a long time to load. For example, there's a ton of client-side JS magic happening to achieve super-ellipses. Also should look into building a completely custom Swiper with Framer Motion and replacing that with the current Swiper.js. That would simplify also the Swipe expansion and swiping itself could become more "springy". In addition, proper lazy loading of posts should be introduced.

UI revamp

This pretty much includes everything, but especially the Feed and Swipe editor. Designer is needed.

Accessibility improvement

Keyboard navigation and actually well.. the entire accessibility feature-set should be improved. It's broken in some places, or simply not comfortable to use.

Liking and commenting

Still not sure whether to include liking, "hearting" or something similar. Commenting seems necessary.

Community & Feedback

Better mechanisms to capture and process feedback from users and community to base further developments upon.

Swipekick was co-created by Tarvi, Sander, Sander and Jürgen.

Swipekick also wouldn’t be possible without some key technologies. This list will be updated as it will highly likely change. For example, Swipekick has been a native iOS app and also has had a Java back-end in the past.

Here’s the current stack:

Next.js and React as a full-stack framework and Vercel for hosting.

Supabase as our current prototype database and storage.

Also many other libraries, including Framer Motion for spring, layout and drag animations, Radix headless components as a base for UI components, Swiper.js as the base for the swipers, Figma Squircle to calculate super-ellipses, TipTap for the content editing and React Email with Resend for custom emails.

Say hi to Swipes and Feeds

Swipekick is an experiment in micro-blogging. Instead of one large blog post, the content is split into smaller pieces called Swipes. You can add as many Swipes as you'd like, at any moment you'd like. They form a Feed that can be browsed either by swiping or in the classical article view.

What can I actually do here?

It all comes down to Swipes and Feeds that can be about pretty much anything: music playlists, journals, photos, videos, or even poems. You essentially have a classical content editing experience where you can edit text, add images, and videos. The only difference is splitting it into Swipes. How long or short one Swipe ends up being is entirely up to you.

Why can’t I sign up?

We’ve currently made it a private beta, but you can already sign up for the waiting list. We’re finishing up with the final stretch of testing and necessary features, and we’ll let you know once it’s ready. We don’t want you to have a sub-par experience. We also don't want our servers to crash down.

But wait! Isn’t blogging dead?

The landscape has changed drastically over the years, but we believe that there’s still a void to fill between the classical blog and your modern social media feeds. We also feel that written word is a door to person's mind who wrote it. Swipekick tries to bridge that gap with something a bit “different” with Swipes and Feeds. Let's see if it works or not.

Introduction

This Cookie Policy explains how Swipekick ("Platform," "we," "us," and "our") uses cookies and similar technologies to recognise you when you visit our website at http://www.swipekick.com ("Website"). It explains what these technologies are and why we use them, as well as your rights to control our use of them.

Why do we use cookies?

We use first- and third-party cookies for several reasons. The cookies we use are required for technical reasons in order for our Website to operate, and we refer to these as "essential" cookies. We don't use cookies to track our users. This may change in the future and Cookie Policy will be updated accordingly.

How can I control cookies?

Technically you have the right to decide whether to accept or reject cookies. Essential cookies cannot be rejected as they are strictly necessary to provide you with services. Our Website currently uses only "essential" cookies.

First- and third-party cookies served through our Website:

Google reCaptcha, but only when log-in, sign-up or waiting list modal is open.

What about other tracking technologies, like web beacons?

Our Website currently doesn't use any other technologies.

Do you use Flash cookies or Local Shared Objects?

Currently not.

Do you serve targeted advertising?

No.

How often will you update this Cookie Policy?

We may update this Cookie Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to the cookies we use or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. Please therefore revisit this Cookie Policy regularly to stay informed about our use of cookies and related technologies.